


Whereas the World Is the Sea and You Are My Boat

by thestaremaster



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-12 12:46:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5666575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestaremaster/pseuds/thestaremaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which BB-8, a particularly grumpy cat, forces together two unlikely friends and an even grumpier roommate.</p><p>A.k.a. the college AU where Rey's a mechanic, Poe's a 4 x 400 runner, and Finn has no idea what he's doing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm like Finn. I also have no idea what I'm doing. Enjoy.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Finn misses class and meets a boy.

“Shit.  Shit shit shit,” Finn muttered as he slouched forward and tried to make himself invisible.  His terrifying TA for statics was heading in his direction and would undoubtedly get some sort of vindictive pleasure from seeing a student absent from Professor Statura’s class and dragging them into the lecture hall in ignominy.  Finn cast his gaze around desperately, looking for any sort of plausible excuse that wasn’t the pathetic truth of oversleeping, and saw a boy sitting on the edge of the quad’s fountain, legs crossed, tapping away at his phone.  _Good enough,_ he thought, and sidled over to the fountain.  The boy looked up, eyes partially blocked by dark curly hair, and lowered his phone.  The TA stomped up to the two just as Finn kneeled down, slid his arm around the boy’s shoulders, and whispered, “please play along or I’m fucked.”

“If I remember correctly, you’re in Professor Statura’s statics class.”  Finn’s stomach did an unpleasant flip.  “And, if I remember correctly, Professor Statura’s class is meeting right now, and he doesn’t tolerate absences from his class.”  Finn met the TA’s frosty look with what he hoped was an earnest expression. 

“I know, yeah, I’m so sorry.  I’ve never been late to class before but he needed some help and I was going to take him to the infirmary to make sure he was okay.”  The boy beside him caught on instantly and, to Finn’s relief, let out a rather convincing groan.

“Hey, I’m sorry I held him up, man, I think I almost passed out and he caught me and I…oh, boy, I feel really lightheaded.”  The boy added another piteous moan for effect and cradled his head in his hands.  The TA relented his scrutinizing, glare shifting into something between skepticism and concern.  Finn unwound his arm from the boy’s shoulder and patted his back.

“Yeah…okay, I guess, whatever.  If you don’t show up to class after that, though, I’ll make sure Professor Statura kills your attendance grade.”  Finn nodded vigorously, helping the boy up and walking in the direction of the infirmary.  Once the TA had crossed the quad and walked into the student union building, Finn let go of the boy and stood back, breathing hard and silently thanking any higher being for the boy’s superior acting skills.  The boy, in the meantime, doubled over with laughter, hands on his knees, gasping for breath.

“Oh, man, thank you so much.  You saved my ass, I thought my TA was gonna rip me a new one.”  The boy straightened up and wiped away a tear before clapping Finn on the shoulder.

“Hey, no problem, buddy.  Seems like you’ve got a fascist TA—no one deserves that much shit for being late to class.”  He glanced away for a moment, as if moving on to another train of thought, before glancing back at Finn with quirked lips.  “Any particular reason you’re missing class?  Hangover?  Spent the night with a lady friend?”  This was accompanied with a gleeful waggle of his eyebrows.  Finn could feel his face flushing and coughed away some undetectable itch in his throat.

“Um, no, nothing that exciting.  Just overslept is all, I’m really not a morning person.  Actually, I should go—better get to class before my TA comes back and verbally skewers me.  Listen, thanks again for your help, I owe you one.”  With a taut smile and a little one-shouldered shrug, Finn turned to leave, fingering the strap of his backpack compulsively.  As he started to stride away, though, he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned back to the boy, who was still smiling just as warmly as before.

“I didn’t catch your name, buddy.  I’m Poe—Dameron.”  Finn could feel the beginnings of a smile blossoming at the corners of his lips; something about the boy’s—Poe’s—cheerful unconcernedness warmed him.

“I’m Finn.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Finn.”  Poe flashed another smile, wide and twinkling, before letting his hand slide off Finn’s shoulder and turning to walk away.  Finn watched him for a few moments, wondering how he’d never seen someone as vibrant as Poe around campus before now, but jolted out of his reverie when he realized that he was still late to class and still had to show up.  His step had particular spring in it, and he couldn’t find it in himself to be truly concerned about Professor Statura’s potential wrath.

 

* * * * * * * * *

 

Finn quite enjoyed the easy camaraderie he and Rey had almost accidentally developed after Rey had nearly broken his nose upon meeting him.  Granted, neither party was completely at fault, the incident having been more the product of the school’s all-gender rooming policies.  Two days before classes started, Finn had opened the door of his new dorm to find a girl, mid-change, staring at him from the middle of the room.

Rey, naturally, hadn’t immediately come to the conclusion that it had simply been her new roommate opening the door at an inopportune time and had taken what she considered to be appropriate measures.

Once he had informed her and they were both apologizing profusely at each other, Finn for accidentally seeing Rey half-naked, Rey for decking her roommate in the face and giving him a memorable nosebleed, they found themselves laughing over the strangeness and absurdity of the situation.  After that first encounter, the rest came quite easily.

“Hey.  Finn.  Hello, am I talking to anyone right now or have you taken up your rightful place in the world as a vegetable?”  Rey giggled as Finn batted at her arm in mock indignance and bumped his shoulder against hers.  He appreciated the easy physical contact they regularly shared, something he’d never had in his life and didn’t realize he had been missing.

“Nah, sorry, just spaced out.  What were you complaining about?”

“Shut up, I’m not complaining!  Okay, I totally am, but that’s not the point at all.  So this guy has come into the shop, backward hat, you know the kind— _complete_ wanker.  And when I ask him what’s going on with the car, what he wants me to fix, you know, he actually asks to see a man working there because he doesn’t think I could get the job done!  So I just went in the back and got my manager, and of course she comes out of the back with the most terrifying expression on her face, you know the one, and the wanker just gets up and leaves.  Not sure if he was embarrassed or terrified, but I hope it was a healthy mix of both.  Anyway, I love working for Maz, it’s so much better than back home when I had to work for Plutt.”

Finn loved the long-winded stories that Rey would often launch into as soon as he walked in the room after classes, especially after particularly long and grinding days.  Though she didn’t warm up easily to other people, Finn assumed she mustn’t have many people to talk to back home based on how brightly her face lit up when she shared even the most mundane of stories with Finn.

Removing his notebooks and textbooks from his backpack, he put them all back in their places as he and Rey continued chatting.  Not a great tendency, Finn knew, but some habits die hard, especially when they’d been driven into him so hard that he could still feel the proverbial grooves.  Everything of Finn’s had its place.  Bed made, chair pushed into the desk, books organized on the shelf according to author’s last name, notebooks stacked in the drawer according to when he had each class, shoes placed in a straight line in the bottom of his closet, slightly pitiful and severely lacking wardrobe hanging up and organized by colour.  His computer always rested on his desk, right in front of the chair, plugged in and charging in perpetuity.  He hadn’t arrived with any photos or personal items other than clothes, but Rey had made sure to rectify that quickly.

A photo hung above the head of his bed, positioned perfectly straight, of Rey and him smiling and laughing.  Rey had taken the impromptu picture, much to Finn’s chagrin, after he’d told her that he’d never tried ice cream before and, horrified, she’d dragged him to the nearest ice cream parlor.

Rey’s side of the room was a different story entirely.

While she also had few personal belongings in quantity, she made up for the lack by strewing them about the room, almost as if to take up the otherwise empty space.  She somehow always managed to throw at least part of her sheet and blankets onto the floor when she slept, ensuring that they cascaded from the edge of the bed and snaked along the carpeting.  Finn had managed to trip over said blankets more times than he could count.  Her desk always had more stuff, for lack of a better word, on it than could reasonably fit, and she filled her shelf with tchotchkes and odd objects that she seemed to collect on a whim.  Rey often hung her towel from the curtain rod of their window, which he now opened to let in some of the cool midafternoon air.

They both had more homework than either cared to admit, but it was easy to pass the time relating stories and, when Finn told Rey about that morning’s incident, teasing and being teased.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Finn acquires a cat and Jessika Pava is slightly terrifying.

The shifting of light was the first indication that something was wrong.  Finn didn’t know what had awoken him, but as he lay in his bed, eyes closed, listening to Rey’s slow breaths across the room, he noticed a shadow dancing over his eyelids where uninterrupted moonlight should have shone.

 _Oh, god, what if there’s someone in the room?_ he wondered.  Panic, jagged and liquid, slipped up his throat, constricting and urgent all at once.  He focused on breathing in an out slowly and evenly, just like he’d been taught, but he could feel his control beginning to slide away.  Still, he kept his eyes closed.

The shadow moved again, soundless.  Finn questioned if he should jump up and catch the person by surprise or continue pretending to sleep in the hope that whoever had broken in simply wanted to steal something and leave.  Either way, he ran the risk of getting hurt.  _But what if Rey gets hurt?_   Another icy tendril of anxiety spun its way around his heart, which felt like it wanted to beat its way out of his chest.  Finn tensed his muscles, preparing to open his eyes and jump up—

 _“Mrrrow.”_   The sound at once startled and relieved him in the extreme.  That was decidedly not the sound of a burglar or a murderer breaking into their room to steal all two of their valuable possessions and slit their throats for good measure.  Blinking into the semi-darkness and extending his arms and legs until he felt a satisfying pop in his back, Finn hauled himself into something resembling a sitting position to find the source of the scratchy, irritated noise.

Rey still slept, an arm and leg dangling haphazardly off the bed, sheet and blanket twisted into an impressive knot that only covered her legs.  Though he knew Rey would slap his arm and tell him he was creepy for it, Finn liked watching Rey sleep, simply because she almost never looked as serene in her waking moments.  Whatever life she’d come from hadn’t been easy and had hewn her into a taciturn, resourceful, untrusting young woman.  Always alert, she looked at people and saw the things they most wanted to hide, prying secrets out of expressions and unsaid words as a form of self-preservation.  And despite all the joy and laughter she’d discovered hiding inside her, she always carried a kernel of that hardened girl she’d been when Finn had first met her.  She always slept deeply and peacefully, though, forehead free of a frown and lips slightly parted.

Finn cast about the room easily, bright as everything had become in the unhindered moonlight.  It took him a few minutes before he located the source of the raspy meowing, which turned out to be hiding under Finn’s desk, curled up and looking for all the world like an orange-and-white striped fuzzy soccer ball.  The cat was large but, from what he could see, rather lean.  When he held his hand out under the desk, palm up, the cat batted at his fingers, scratching Finn and leaving angry red lines behind.  Finn winced, shook his hand, and clambered further under the desk.

“Hey, kitty, I’m not gonna hurt you,” he whispered in what he hoped to be a calm, reassuring tone.  The cat’s reaction gave him reason to think it didn’t come across as such.  Confusion at the cat’s presence in the room quickly gave way to exasperation—Finn itched to give up, ignore the cat, and go back to bed (where he desperately wanted to be).  With a sigh, he kept talking to the cat quietly because he knew he didn’t want to go to sleep now and wake up in the wee hours of the morning with a heap of fur suffocating him.

It took another fifteen minutes of cooing and coaxing and scratches before Finn got a hand on the cat, which he designated Asshole, to pet it and rub behind its ears gently.   Another ten minutes and he felt his back cramping up horribly, but he had both arms around the cat and wriggled out from under the desk.  It weighed a considerable amount but, save its squirming, fit easily into Finn’s arms.  Easing off his knees and straightening up, Finn admired the cat’s sleek striped fur, luminous and almost blue-tinted in the glow of the moon shining through the open window.

_Of course.  Of course it’s the fucking window.  I’m such a tosspot._

Finn set the cat down gingerly on his bed, waiting for it to settle itself before shuffling back across the carpet to pull the window, undoubtedly the source of Asshole the cat, fully shut.  He paused for a moment, wondering if he could just put the cat back outside, before sighing and latching the window.  The cat did seem awfully well-groomed and well-fed for a stray, so someone in the area would possibly be looking for it tomorrow.  He could at least go to the announcement boards around campus tomorrow and look for missing pet fliers.  And god help him, Finn knew that if he put the cat back outside without letting Rey pet it and she found out (which she would), she would dismember him while he was sleeping.

Or worse.  He could definitely think of worse.

 

* * * * * * * * *

 

“Why the fuck is there a cat in our room?”  Rey’s surprise couldn’t hide the ear-to-ear smile growing on her face.  _Of course the cat loves Rey,_ Finn thought.  Asshole the cat had curled itself up on Rey’s outstretched legs before she even woke up and now leaned into the palm of her hand as she reached out to pat its head and scratch under its chin.  Finn steeled himself with nonchalance, even though he knew Rey saw right through it.

“Okay, so let me premise it by saying that it’s only partially my fault.  I may have opened the window and forgotten to close it and—no, don’t interrupt me—it was totally partially your fault for not remembering to close it either.”  Rey aimed a _look_ at him, the one where her eyes became uncomfortably sharp and her lips thinned into a long, pursed line.  “Maybe it was more my fault?” Finn amended.

“Your fault entirely, though I can’t say I’m mad.”  Rey’s accent was always more pronounced when she’d just woken up, like she’d forgotten the fact that she hadn’t been home for years.

“So, we should probably figure out if it’s a stray or not.”

“It’s not.  Which means that, until we find its owner, we need to come up with some version of a litter box unless we want it to find a nice corner of our room and use that instead.”

“What—Rey, how do you know it isn’t a stray?  It didn’t have a collar or anything.  I mean, it doesn’t look underfed or anything but how can you be sure?”  Rey leveled another look at Finn, this one expressing a sort of wry amusement.

“I wanted to be a zookeeper for years.  I was obsessed with animals—well, some animals.  Cats and rats, specifically, but I never really loved dogs.  I’m not sure why, really, it might have just been that—well, anyway, I can tell.  It has a line on its stomach where it got some sort of minor surgery, so there's the mystery sorted.”  Finn perched on the edge of Rey’s bed as he laced up his boots; Asshole the cat scrambled to its feet and jumped to the ground, meowing indignantly at being displaced.  Finn watched the cat as it stalked about the room, sniffing Rey’s clothes and batting at Finn’s shoes before settling on Rey’s jacket and curling itself into a tight ball, tail poking up just enough to be funny.

“So, what do we do?  I have class until the afternoon....”  Rey cracked her knuckles and grabbed her computer from its precarious resting place at the edge of her bed.

“Well, I don’t.  I’ll look on Facebook for anything and make sure the cat only shits on your bed.  You look around campus for flyers between classes, maybe ask some people, and we’ll figure where to go from there.”

 _Always has a plan,_ Finn thought, snickering and raising an eyebrow at her deadpan expression.

 

* * * * * * * * *

 

To Finn’s relief and surprise, he’d only been out of their room for about ten minutes before he found the first evidence of Asshole the cat’s origin.  Or, rather, heard it.  Striding past one of the dining halls in the student union on his way to snag a bagel and tea, an alarmingly piercing voice made itself known to the entire area.

“Listen up, people!  My friend’s cat is lost and now you’re all gonna help me find him!  He’s big and white and orange and responds to ‘BB-8,’ so if you find or are in possession of this cat, go to room 470 in Yavin hall.  If you’re thinking about keeping BB for yourself, I will personally hunt you down and cut you, so best not to!”

The source of this frighteningly loud and loudly frightening pronouncement, Finn finally realized, was an incredibly short girl standing on one of the dining hall’s tables, surrounded by other students who were either cackling, banging their hands on their chairs, or smushing their faces against the table.

Finn experienced a moment of unadulterated joy followed on its heels by the disheartening reality of his class schedule.

He couldn’t miss Professor Statura’s statics class, couldn’t even be late again, not if he wanted to end the day alive and not dismembered or otherwise maimed by his TA.  But what if the girl standing on the table found out that he’d had BB-8 this whole time and hadn’t taken the time to return the cat until much later in the day?  _Somehow she seems just as scary...._   Shouldering his bag, Finn shuffled his feet for a few moments before turning away from the girl and her friends (and the substantial crowd that had amassed around her) in favor of procuring food and not being late to class.  _As soon as classes are done,_ he thought fervently, _I promise—I’ll return the damn cat.  God, I hope it hasn’t actually shat on my bed._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments? Questions? Critiques? Clementines? Feel free to share.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Finn reflects on a carpet and doesn't get lost.

_Room 470, Yavin hall.  470?  Or was it 370?  No, it was 470.  Fourth floor, 470, fourth floor, 470._   Finn rushed to Yavin Hall from his last class of the day—applied multivariable calculus—without stopping at his dorm.  He’d pictured trying to get BB-8 across campus without dropping and losing the cat and could imagine the endless worst-case scenarios.  _Better to let whoever owns the damn cat take care of it._

Finn jogged up the stairs and, still breathing hard, found the right door at the end of the long hall.  In his opinion, stairs certainly counted as one of humankind’s worst adversaries.  Fascism, war, and stairs.  No matter how much he exercised or how far he could run, three lousy flights of stairs had him bent over and wheezing for breath.  Catching his breath and readjusting his backpack as it threatened to slip off his shoulders, Finn rapped on the door above a little white board a few times and waited.

No answer.

“Hello?  Anyone there?  This sounds kinda weird but I have your cat, so you probably want it back.”

Finn looked down at the floor, toeing at a spot where the carpet had started to unravel, the green and grey fibers straggling up from the floor only to be bent and crushed every time a foot landed there.  Waiting in the taut silence, Finn nudged at the little threads until they stood on end like little weedy plants rising from the floor.  In a small, pathetic way, he felt for the little pieces of runaway carpet.  They wanted to escape their designated spot in the big pattern of the wall-to-wall and instead stuck out unpleasantly to those who cared enough to notice.

After what seemed like a sufficient period of nothingness, Finn raised his hand to knock again.  Whoever lived in 470 probably had headphones on, doing work or listening to music or watching porn.  Finn physically cringed at the thought of interrupting someone doing _that._   Now that would be a quintessential college experience he never wanted to have.  As he knocked again, he noticed writing on the whiteboard—it looked like a schedule, neat and organized into days of the week and times, though why someone would want to share information that detailed with anyone who came by didn’t make much sense.

_Wednesday, 3:30-5:30 pm: track practice._

_Shit._   Followed closely by, _Wait, I totally know where the track is, I can go find this guy and still get BB-8 to him before the end of the day._

Finn turned on his heel and marched down the hall with purpose, more than a little happy that he was going _down_ the stairs this time.  Once outside he circled around briefly, orienting himself and deciding which way to go.  A campus as expansive as this one provided ample ways to get horridly lost, but Finn had a passable sense of direction and took walks when he wanted to be outside.  It was only ten minutes before he’d reached the edge of the large track field, abuzz with college students in every stage of a sports practice—drinking water from a cooler, tying shoelaces, stretching, queuing up at a start line for a heat, chalking their hands for another vault, doing every imaginable running and agility drill.  Finn realized with a nasty, empty sort of feeling that he didn’t even know the guy’s name.

Finding him might be harder than he’d thought.

Until he spotted the girl from earlier, completely by accident, as he swiveled around and flitted his gaze from group to group around the pitch.  She stood, dwarfed, next to two tall boys.  One had the look of an inverted broom, rail thin with a sizeable head and unruly hair; the other was more substantial, obviously fit, and had a neatly trimmed beard and floppy hair.  The three appeared to be arguing, each gesticulating wildly, though the girl wore a smile obviously devoid of malice.  It reminded him of Rey.

He approached them and could hear phrases like “slowest of the slow” and “that time you tripped on literally nothing” among the squabble.

“Excuse me?”

They all looked up, the girl mid-rant, and seemed to laser in on Finn, their eyes uncomfortably sharp but obviously withholding judgment, which mitigated Finn’s uneasiness.

“Hey, guys, I’m Finn,” he started, speaking assertively.  He was of the opinion that when he wasn’t familiar with the situation, it was always best to pretend to know exactly what he was about.  It usually worked, save for a few spectacular and notable instances when his posing had fallen flat on its face.  “I’m just here to return BB-8 to your friend.  Climbed in my window last night and I saw you in the dining hall this morning.”  The girl’s expression froze over.  She stepped forward and poked Finn square in the chest, hard enough that he huffed out a startled breath, his confident composure quickly collapsing.

“You’re a real bucket brain.  Why the hell didn’t you tell me that this morning if you were there?  Huh, punk?  Ever thought about how hard it is to lose a pet and have no fucking clue where it might be?  And you just thought you’d wait for a day to tell me because you couldn’t be bothered to—”

“Well, I had a class that—”

“Don’t interrupt me.  You couldn’t spare the five seconds it would’ve taken to walk your sorry ass over to the table and say, ‘hey, Jess, by the way, I have your friend’s cat and do intend on returning him at some point in time?’”

The two boys wore twin expressions of pained sympathy.  Finn had the distinct impression that they witnessed this divulgement of vehement—verging on violent—incredulity on a semi-regular basis.  They didn’t, however, jump into the conversation, and Finn couldn’t really find it in himself to blame them, all things (Jess, specifically) considered.

“Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you then but I couldn’t be late for the class I was going to!  I’ve already been late a couple times and my TA is a complete psycho—if I’d been late today, my ass woulda been grass.”  Jess, going by her expression, was not in any way impressed.

“Cry me a fucking river.  Forgive me if I can’t seem to find it in myself to feel bad for your sorry ass for missing class.”

“Damn, Testor, take it easy.”  Finn turned at the familiar voice coming from behind him and saw a familiar, albeit marginally glummer, face.

“Poe!”  Poe gave him a diminished smile, shadows dark under his eyes but smile lines pronounced.  He clapped Finn on the back and edged forward to join the others.

“Hey, buddy.  Jess, this is Finn—I’m not sure what he’s done to incur your wrath but I doubt it’s entirely deserved.”  Jess prickled slightly before sighing and waving a hand.

“He found BB-8, Poe.”  By the time Finn had glanced over at Poe, his face had already lit up in sheer delight.

“No kidding!  Thank you so much, Finn, you have no idea how worried I was!  Where is BB?”  Jess rolled her eyes in good-humored exasperation as Poe looked around cursorily.

“BB-8 isn’t here, you fuzzball, he’s not gonna bring a cat onto a track and field pitch.  Can you imagine how that would pan out?  Lost cat part two.”  Poe waved the comment away and the two were soon engrossed in banter filled with names and references that Finn couldn’t begin to guess at.  He watched as Poe relaxed into the conversation, cocking his hip and crossing his arms only to uncross them every few moments to gesture at something.  He wore a bright orange college track t-shirt—that, if Finn was honest, was a little bit blinding, and not in a good way—and what looked like white running shorts, though Finn couldn’t say from experience.

Finn could make out goose bumps forming on his forearms and beads of sweat trickling down his temple, meandering along their path before clinging to the strong line of his jaw and finally splashing against the hollow of his collarbone.  Finn huffed out a little laugh—of course Poe looked like he’d walked out of a sports magazine of some sort, the paragon of fitness and athleticism and the human form.  His hair only barely got in his face, curling down from his forehead to brush against his eyebrows when he let out a laugh and nodded.  Best of all—to Finn, at least—he practically exuded a charming warmth, of attitude or personality or both he couldn’t tell.

“So, buddy, how did you find BB-8?  Any thrilling story to tell?”  The others focused their attention back on Finn, this time less accusatory (in the case of Jess) and less pitying (in the case of the two other boys, who Poe had called Iolo and Snap).

“No, no thrilling story, unfortunately.  Though I will say that your cat doesn’t seem to like me very much—it took me a good twenty minutes to convince him to get out from under my desk, and I have the scratches to prove it.”  Finn held up his hand, presenting the several angry-looking marks to Poe, who winced and laughed at once.  He wasn’t, he wagered, BB-8’s first victim.  “The cat seems to like my roommate, but she has a thing for animals, so it’s not really that surprising.  When did BB-8 get out?  Actually, _how_ did BB-8 get out?”  Poe rubbed the back of his neck, mussing the sweaty hair curling there against his skin, and looked suitably sheepish.

“Well, I left the door open a little too long.”  Jess cackled.

“And what were you doing, flyboy?” she questioned merrily.  Poe groaned and hung his head.

“I may or may not have been trying to fit a very large keg through the door?  But it wasn’t like I was drunk at the time or anything,” he assured Finn earnestly.  “It was just at a yard sale for like five dollars and who the hell wouldn’t buy a fifteen-gallon keg for five dollars?”

Finn had by then joined the others in laughing, fighting the urge to double over.

“Mind you,” Jess piped up, “he doesn’t even drink and he never hosts parties because he’s an RA.”

“Hey, who cares!  It was five dollars!”  Poe somehow managed to seem slightly affronted and jubilant simultaneously, and Finn surmised that this sort of occurrence wasn’t all too rare.  Poe clapped Finn on the back again and let his hand linger for a moment, warm and firm.

“Anyway, that happened.  But now the cat’s been found and all is right in the world.  How about I go retrieve BB from your room, does that sound okay?”  Finn swallowed, thinking of Poe in his room.  He hoped that Rey’s side of the room wasn’t too hopelessly cluttered.  Something about Poe’s bearing spoke of neatness and thoughtfulness and, like some unaccountable itch, Finn wanted to meet that imagined standard.

“Sounds like a plan.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please, dear god, help me come up with a title that doesn't suck.
> 
> Rating will change accordingly as chapters are added. (Read: rating will change to M or E because let's be real here.)


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